As attention turns again to the prospect of US-led military action, this time against Iran, it may be apposite that a group of journalists and thinkers who supported the Iraq war, in the face of opprobrium from their peers, has chosen this moment to set out a manifesto for what they believe to be the true path of an internationalist left. Their choice of the New Statesman, which has led the public discourse in opposition to the Bush-Blair adventure in Iraq, might seem curious. Perhaps this awkwardness makes the debate all the more welcome on our pages. We publish the full text on our website.

As we said in our leader, there is much to commend in this manifesto. It espouses the principles of democratic elections, freedom of speech and assembly, and fundamental human rights. It supports equality in all its forms, and declares the need for reform of international institutions to ensure a more equitable outcome from free trade. It advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So far, so good. At this point, however, it becomes trickier. The authors of the document claim among their number several people who opposed the Iraq war. That may be the case, and ours is not to question those people's reasons for aligning themselves in this way. But the impetus that has driven many of those involved in recent years has been a mistrust of the anti-war movement. On Iraq, time and again, the pro-war "left" fell back on polemic rather than argument, whipping itself into apoplexy when its views were challenged. It simply will not do to level accusations of appeasement against those who provided evidence to show that the case for war had not been made. These self-styled progressives should now surely admit that, whatever the theory underpinning humanitarian intervention, on its execution in Iraq they got it spectacularly wrong in just about every respect - to the long-term detriment of the internationalist cause they profess to espouse and which we, in the broadest sense, support.